Well, This is Awkward
by Little Boy of Lothering
Summary: After hearing Charlie talk about the Winchester Gospels, Kevin decides to check them out because it's not like he really knows all that much about Sam and Dean, right? And he really, really knows he should stop reading for the sake of his sanity, but it turns out the lives of two idiots who started the Apocalypse are more interesting than he thought. Wincest. Part of RAtP.


Of all the requests I got off of Remove All the Pieces, this is the one that wins all the awards for being awesome. And not depressing.

Also, WARNING: there's one part where Kevin does a tumblr speculation and it's actually not influenced by my views, but what I set up and imagining what it must feel like to be reading character bashing or even glorification of people you live with.

Cas isn't really in this. I adore the guy, but it's three in the morning and I'm still not used to writing him enough not to pay attention to writing his dialogue.

Disclaimer: basically, not mine.

.

It's all Charlie fault, really. Kevin would've preferred to stay in the dark about things, but he gets too curious too quickly and, well, maybe that saying about the cat isn't too far off the mark.

Because this isn't what he expected.

Of course, he knew Dean had something wrong with him - Hell, you had to _blind _not see the guy's got a couple of screws loose up there - but exactly how fucked up he is takes Kevin by surprise. Turns out even "normal" ghost hunting is more hardcore than he thought and he honestly believed _he _had bad luck? He's pretty sure having your mom get killed by burning to death of a ceiling above her six-month-year-old son only to have Jessica Moore die right above Sam again on the exact same day twenty-two years later is proof that the world's got a hard-on for making this family suffer. And this is only the first book. Man, he had no idea what he's getting into.

But no, really, Kevin, Charlie says when he calls her up after bitching to him for half an hour about _are you sure you want to do this because the writing is shit and they've got stuff wrong with them that psychiatrists don't even have names for yet_, you have no idea. It gets so much worse.

She says it gets worse. And then even more worse, which is a grammatical error, once Cas comes in. And, oh yeah, I think I'll surprise them with a movie night, are you okay with the new Spider-Man movie?

He tells her he's good with that as he starts on the second book. The writing's bad, but that makes the books easy to get through and normally he'd just drop this sort of thing but at the same time it's like, holy shit I'm reading the thoughts and feelings of the people I live with. And that's kind of weird. But probably not as weird as getting tied up in an abandoned mine by a hundred-year-old monster who eats people for snacks. At one point he spends a solid five minutes trying to figure out how you pronounce Wendigo before finally checking it up on his phone and finding out it's phonetic.

Awesome.

Hours later, when he's midway through the third book and forcing his face into a pillow so Sam and Dean won't hearing his laughing because being afraid of flying is beyond hilarious for Misters We-Stopped-Three-Apocalypses, Charlie calls one of them to say she's outside with peach salsa and a movie. She gives him a hug when he comes over, tight and warm like Channing and neither of them mentions that she's got him hooked on those _Supernatural _books. When they pull away she wiggles her eyebrows at him and gets a connector cable out of her bag.

"Superhero movies good?" she asks, smiling brightly and the Winchesters say they're okay with anything but chick-flicks, which he agrees with.

("_Hey, man, no chick-flick moments_.")

They settle down around the couches, though Sam looks like sitting is uncomfortable and it probably is. He seriously wishes those trials weren't on the tablet because it's not like they were able to go through it anyway. Which basically means the guy's dying for nothing.

Suddenly it hits him that, okay, this is kind of weird - Mom's dead, Channing's dead, school's officially off the table, and he just wasted pretty much last year getting tortured or translating - that he doesn't regret getting involved with these two. At all. Or, maybe four if you want to include Garth and Cas in there but still. He wishes Mom and Channing were here bad enough that he'll still cry at night and watches slideshows of them on his computer, but he's still completely cool with watching _The Amazing Spider-Man _on a Saturday night with four adults, one of which is a Fallen Angel, in a super secret organization headquarters that beats the Batcave by about a thousand.

Maybe he should be getting his head checked out too, but, hey, great power doesn'tmean keeping up great responsibility every minute of every day, right?

Yeah, didn't think so.

.

Kevin gags his way through _Bugs _and calls up Charlie when he finishes.

"You said all this actually happened, right?" he says, grabbing onto _Home._ Earlier Sam bitched and complained about being kept under quarantine so much that Dean eventually found them a salt 'n burn outside of Sunrise, Wyoming (which is important enough to earn a laugh apparently), so they're gone and Cas went with them. Which basically means he has nothing to do and he hasn't picked up any of these or any other books in about two days. "Absolutely everything?"

"_According to them_," she answers and he hears zombies getting killed in the background. "_Why? Wait - did you get to ten yet?_"

"That's the one I'm holding."

"_Uh, Kev, you should reevaluate your life choices before you start on it._"

Even though that sends up more warning signs than he knows what to do with, he figures that not _all _cats die of curiosity and he's willing to take a risk. That one on tumblr that got into the vending machine lived a long and healthy life, after all. He asks what she means.

"_Uh, let's just say God's okay with all sorts of romance._"

Ominous, he thinks. "What? One of them is into guys?"

"_Not strictly speaking. Just remember that they literally only grew up with each other and I don't know, maybe it's just me and like the majority of the fanbase, but I seriously don't care. And Dean knows this. Maybe Sam, but I never really know with him._"

"Just spit it out, Charlie. Screw spoilers, this is real life anyway."

So she does. Tell him, that is. And he has a feeling the appropriate reaction to finding out the two of the guys you live with and saved the world multiple times are in complete incestuous love with each other isn't laughing hysterically. But really, what else did he expect? Dean basically said fuck the world to keep Sam alive and he half-thought that was what was going on a while ago anyway.

Still, it'll take some getting used to but he's the only person in four planes of existence who can read the Word of God besides the asshole who wrote it, so he figures he can deal.

.

Sam can see death visions and is apparently even more fucked up than at least younger-Dean. The psychic stuff was in _Home _and now _Nightmare_, and there were little hints of - what would this be? depression? maybe - but earlier during _Faith _he was forced to read through a whole page's worth of one of his best friends justifying killing himself by saying he's going to Hell anyway.

But, wait.

Best friends?

Well. He can work with that.

_Nightmare _freaks him out a lot but _The Benders _is worse. After spending almost two years complete immersed in the insanity that is demons and angels and the Winchesters get a category of their own, he sort of forgot that humans can be just as evil too. In his sophomore year of high school, he took a philosophy class. His teacher was an Israeli man whose parents where both Holocaust survivors and he asked, "Does evil exist?" He was the only one who agreed with the teacher that it does. Now, he addresses it in a more literal sense, but reading about Sam stuck in a cage with Dean freaking out not knowing where he is, he gets a wakeup call reminding him that, oh yeah, humans can be just as bad as demons.

Just as he starts _Shadow_, Sam shoots him a text asking if he wants pizza because apparently Dean doesn't feel like cooking. On Wednesdays, his mom used to get pizza on her way home because that were her longest day and he was always starving after Student Council. High school doesn't even seem real anymore. Channing once told him college wouldn't matter one day. He doesn't think this is what she had in mind.

He texts back, _Make it plain. _

.

"So they still have zero idea you're reading their lives?"

Kevin's out with Charlie because it's not like he can just pick up and go hunting like Sam, Dean, and their resident humanified angel. And he doesn't really like shopping but he'd drown in anyone else's hand-me-downs where are all about third hand anyway, so he convinced her to pick him up. At least she's willing to stick to comic shops for t-shirts and American Eagle for jeans and a couple of jackets. It's also June 6 and though the rest of his, well, sort of roommates seem to have a multilayered clothing fetish, he likes his short sleeves.

As he picks up a shirt that reads _Make Love Not Horcruxes_, he answers, "I'm pretty sure Dean would find a way to make looks kill."

Charlie smiles, though whether it's in agreement or approval at his choice in attire is unknown. Even when he was still in high school, he was pretty reclusive. Though the people he's surrounded by are a lot older now, the number's roughly the same. He debates asking her for a game of Magic later. "I think you'd actually need to worry more about Sam on that one," she says. "I gotta say, I actually picked those up because I thought the names were just coincidences. Their minds are scary places."

"Try living with them. Cas has verified that they can have whole conversations without speaking." The shirt's only ten dollars. He can live with that. "Their luck just gets worse, doesn't it?"

"Yup. Where one are you on?"

"Just finished _Devil's Trap._" He wants to ask if she thinks their dad counted as abusive too, but refrains, suddenly very, very conscious that at least one other person in this place has probably read The Winchester Gospels (or so Cas called them) and he really doesn't want to hear anyone's headcanons about his friends. "I think I've got everything."

When they exit the store, he feels more like his old self than he has in months, decked out in mainstream geek stuff and drinking a cappuccino instead of black coffee. Charlie drives him back and he thinks maybe he'll ask Sam and Dean if they can teach him how to hunt.

.

It strikes him randomly, in the middle of the night as he gets ready to sleep after finishing _Hunted_, that he just caught up on about a year and a half of his friend's lives in under two weeks. Suddenly, it feels even creepier than before and it was already pretty creepy to begin with. Really, though, he's just having trouble getting his mind around the idea that anyone could think Sam is evil. Or the antichrist. Just, Jesus Christ. The only thing worse than a crazed Gordon Walker the Vampire Slayer saying it is that apparently his friend agreed - or maybe even agrees, present tense instead of past, because, well, this is _Sam _and the way Dean acts around him kind of says enough on its own - with him.

After a while of tossing and turning because of nerves (they promised to show him his way around a knife tomorrow after much wheedling about self-protection), he gets up and heads to the kitchen to get a glass of water. He's surprised to find Sam in there, dumping out what first looks like ice tea before Kevin realizes it's actually bloody water. Oh. This really isn't what he thinks of as "getting better."

When Sam sees him, he smiles guiltily and says, "It's not as bad as it looks."

"I'm sure," he answers skeptically and gets his own glass. "What're you doing up? Where's Dean?"

"Couldn't get comfortable." Kevin doesn't miss how Sam purposely ignores the last question and he thinks he should probably give them a head's up that he knows about them. "What about you?"

He doesn't want to tell the truth, so he says, "Same." And he completely blames exhaustion when he adds, "This is kind of invasive, but, uh, I heard you and Dean talking the other and what - well, okay, this is awkward."

Sam freezes up. "Which talk?" he asks, not fully masking how nervous he is. Whoops.

He gets caught for a moment because he can't just back out now or it'll look weird and he can either say he heard them talk about medication and he's wondering what for (this is actually what he did hear) or he can go the even worse route and ask about the whole incest thing. He goes for the safer option, which is the first one.

Hiding behind his hair, Sam answers, "Uh, it's a long story but I kind of...hallucinate? Doctor says it's PTSD. Nothing bad and I've got it under control which is why I figured I could get away not telling you. Not exactly something I want to talk about, you know?"

Kevin takes the moment to back out. "Yeah, I get it," he says and drains his glass before putting it in the sink to take care of tomorrow. "Sorry to ask."

"No, it's fine. Should've given you the head's up anyway. I still check out sometimes but Dean or Cas normally catch it before it gets bad." He can't really imagine Cas dealing with a hallucinating Sam at all, but from what he's reading, he's guessing this isn't exactly new for him and the three of them have known each other for a long time. "Anyway, I'm gonna go lie down. See you tomorrow, Kevin."

"Yeah. Night, Sam."

It isn't until his friend's gone that he realizes his hands are shaking.

.

So, Sam gets possessed and two books later has to shoot a girl he gets a crush on. Meanwhile, Dean's almost making himself crazy keeping an eye on his little brother, which is happening present day too. Kevin is so profoundly glad he isn't either of them.

Then that Yellow-Eyes guy is back and he finds out Sam's got demon blood (he thinks it's kind of sad that he totally isn't surprised) and a group of twenty-three-year-olds play mini battle royale. He honestly hadn't thought it could get any more fucked up but then Sam dies and Dean sells his soul and only gets a year to live and okay, apparently surprise is still possible. When he checks the date, he realizes it was May second, which really only makes it worse. This also means that both of his friends have died at least once and maybe even Cas too if Falling counts as dying for an angel.

("_You should have let me stay dead._")

Kevin reads that and slams his laptop shut. It takes a shocking amount of effort not to throw it at the wall too. He isn't sure why he's getting so emotional over something that happened about seven years ago, but he really can't help it. Even when reading fiction he gets like this but it's just _different _this time. Kind of like reading a friend's diary and finding out they've gone their whole lives thinking you hate them. It's that level of bad. Probably even worse.

Next day he talks to Charlie about the whole dying thing and the logistics of it. She laughs so hard she cries and nothing about it is happy.

By the time they hang up, he still hasn't gotten his answer.

.

He realizes Ruby was going after Sam's head about as fast as he realized Bobby was awesome. For the first time, he gets curious enough to check out the fandom on tumblr, which is apparently growing in size before quickly blacklisting everything to do with the series and spending an hour flipping through _Sherlock_, _Harry Potter, _and _Doctor Who _gifs, and cat pictures before reading a couple of Lost Generation poems and "Hills Like White Elephants" to blow off some steam.

Of course, he knows that logically he shouldn't get pissed because to everyone but like him and Charlie, these books are purely fiction and speculating on character motivation and development and even bashing certain things are done for fun. But he _knows _them and hadn't realized how ridiculously defense he can be until he read someone say that Sam is "selfish, not letting Dean branch out" and he "should have known Ruby was manipulating him because c.e. makes him out to be the smart one" while Dean "is just a flawless character" and how one chick summed up a whole section of the very tiny fandom by saying "dean & cas are MEFO & carver edlund is trying too hard to be bold [with the whole incest thing]." He seriously wishes he could just write a giant post pointing out that everyone has a sort of aerial view and from what he's managed to gather in both the books and knowing the guy in real life, Sam doesn't always have his head on straight, especially if it involves Dean getting hurt. Also that Cas are Dean are _best fucking friends _and Sam and Cas are _pretty fucking close too_ and the two brothers are seriously the most awkward, bizarrely subtle romantic pair ever and it has _nothing _to do with whoever this other prophet is because it's _real._

The next day, he watches a Rose and Ten episode, reads _Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief_ all in one go, and throws so much energy into learning how to fight that he actually scares Dean just to take his mind of other people's stupidity.

.

He reads the first seventeen pages of _Mystery Spot _before throwing up when he realizes it's an entire book of Sam having a mental breakdown and Dean dying. When he comes back to it, he flips to the last page, reads it, and moves onto _Jus in Bello._

God, he thinks, no one these two are so fucked up.

At the time, he doesn't know it's about to take a nosedive into Unpleastville.

.

Dean gets killed by hellhounds and Sam finally figures out he's reading the books.

"I - um -" he says, scrambling for an answer before lamely ending, "got curious. I'm sorry."

Sam's full on blushing. "I thought you might eventually once I found out Charlie did too," he says. "And I don't know how far along you are but...I'm kind of an idiot. Now I don't - I mean - well, if you don't like me after I get -"

He doesn't want to tell Sam he already knows about the demon blood addiction and starting the Apocalypse because spoiler alert doesn't exist on things that came out five years ago, so he keeps in his mouth shut. Instead he bluntly says, "You saved the world from ooze monsters and tried to shut the Gates of Hell. Pretty sure that makes up for basically anything you could've done, Sam." After a moment, he adds, "And you and Dean - It's weird, but I'm okay with it."

His friend visibly flinches and mumbles something about not telling his brother and a poltergeist in Indiana before disappearing. Kevin looks at his laptop, shuts it with a sigh, and decides to go for a run. And seriously, just _fuck _anyone who thinks a person who says it's okay to hate them is "selfish."

.

Before he forever terminated his Facebook account in the start of his senior year, he saw one of those posts that was like SHARE IF something stupid, LIKE IF something else stupid that he obviously did neither of the two to because he's always thought stuff like that was pointless, but it stuck with him. For whatever reason, this little piece of social justice that leaked on the dude-what's-my-calc-homework social network site bothered him in a different way than usual. Though he can't remember the exact wording, it was something like this:

"_So, a girl loses her long term boyfriend tragically. She's still not over her grief, suffering from depression, when this other guy comes along, manipulates her, has sex with her and pretends it's love, gets her addicted to a hardcore drug, and then cuts her off so she comes back begging for more so he can take advantage of her._

_If you switch the gender, does it still make you angry_?"

Yeah, that's how he feels when he reads _I Know What You Did Last Summer_ and Sam explains what happened with Ruby before Cas brought Dean back from Hell. And Kevin has to admit, after his mom died, if someone came along and pulled the I Care! act, he probably would've fallen for it too and he's always considered himself a pretty stable person. It's just a thing. Sometimes people drown themselves in chocolate and emo poetry after someone they love dies; other people go a little crazy for a while.

Later, when he sees Sam, he gives him such a tight hug his friend actually gets winded even if he isn't really all that used to this level of affection anymore. Kevin really, really hopes he understands.

.

After he reads about the two different voicemails, he doesn't even close his laptop before he's out the door and running to go and find Dean instead of Sam. Even though the older brother will probably react a Hell of a lot worse when he finds out, Kevin somehow just _knows _the two never figured it out and it's four years later but he needs to rectify this for the sake of everyone here.

Thankfully, Dean's alone (he remembers Sam's out getting food before he wanted to be outside for a little while) when Kevin finds him, packing rounds of rock salt. He looks up when he comes in. Before he can even asks what's wrong, Kevin blurts out, "So, I'm reading those _Supernatural _books because I'm curious and apparently kind of evil and -"

"_What?_"

"Shut up and let me finish!" Dean blinks, obviously surprised because Kevin normally doesn't talk like this and knows it. "Anyway, I just read the part where Sam's about to go off to kill Lilith and you call him and leave that voicemail, but you gotta know that he got a completely different one."

For a moment, everything just seems to kind of stop. Then, slowly, "I'm giving you five seconds to explain."

"Someone fucked with what you sent - doesn't say who - and you were saying how you guys were still brothers or something but the voicemail Sam got said you were done saving him and you were planning on ending him or something. I'm not kidding. All of those happened word for word -"

"Fuck it, kid, just show me."

He leads Dean into his room, half running, and shoves his laptop in Dean's hand when they get there. Thank God his reflexes have improved, too, otherwise his computer would be in pieces on the floor because his friend's hands are shaking hard enough that he dropped it. Instead of addressing Kevin, he pulls his phone out and unlocks it before putting into his ear. After a moment he says, "Sammy, get your ass back here right now - and I swear to God I'm not angry." After he hangs up, probably not even having let his brother get a word in, he takes a deep breath and tells Kevin, "Thanks. I seriously owe you."

One side of his mouth quirks up into a humorless smile. "Sorry for reading them. I know it's a huge invasion of privacy but -"

"It's not exactly like we talk about ourselves and you live with us." Kevin nods. "Son of a bitch. Fine. Take my 'I owe you' as me not getting pissed. And if you read _anything _that you don't think I know about or went on in that freaky head of his come find me, got it?" Again he nods. "Jesus Christ this sucks," he adds more to himself than anything else before leaving.

Kevin skips the part where Sam lets Lucifer free. He's pretty sure that's enough heartbreaking sympathy for one day.

.

A few hours later Sam surprise hugs him. He hugs back. It isn't awkward when they separate without saying anything.

.

"Does Dean know about the hunters going after Sam and the suicide attempts?"

"_Yeah. Finds out later. Neither of them got mad?_"

"No. Does that count as maturing?"

"_Hm. Not sure._" Charlie laughs. "_Feels kind of weird, right?_"

"Pretty much. Honestly, I think this is only slightly less stressful than needing to read the angel tablet in six hours."

"_Wow, that's serious, then. Oh, and we still on for TF-Two when I get back from work?_"

He smiles. "_Wouldn't miss it._"

They hang up.

.

On the same day he reads about Dean taking a trip to the future, he gets a job at a farmer's market only a little ways away. He works at the drink stand, selling lemonade and ice tea to people under sixteen. Earlier Sam collapsed (there's reason none of the other three decided to pick up work outside of hunting but Kevin can only spend so much time in the bunker without getting stir crazy) and he, Dean, and Cas were debating whether or not to bring him to hospital because it was the third time in two weeks as Kevin left for his first day of work. He takes his break at four because he's working until eight, snacking on free food and reading _The End._ He quickly decides he likes present, real-Cas a lot better.

As his half hour draws to a close, he reads about real-Dean meeting Lucifer in Sam's body and feels a little nauseous. This is Sam, trapped inside his own head and probably screaming at the Devil to talk to his brother. In part of the book when he got possessed by Meg, some of their conversation actually written in; Kevin is seriously relieved Chuck Shurley didn't do it this -

"Oh my god, is that _Supernatural?_"

He blinks and looks up to find some chick about his age standing right across from him. "Yeah," he answers and quickly moves to put his laptop back in his bag even though he was mid-sentence. "I'm taking it you read it?"

"'Course," she says with a bright smile. He wonders how Sam, Dean, and Cas would react. Not well, he knows. He and Charlie got off lucky under friend privileges. "That was the twenty-fourteen 'verse one, right?" Since he's not really trusting himself to speak, he just sort of nods. "Oh, that means you're getting to my favorite part!"

How anyone can have a "favorite part" to this badly written, real life train wreck is beyond him but he's a little bias, he guesses. "Which part?" he asks because that sounds like the normal thing. "This is a re-read, so it won't be a spoiler." Yeah, perks of living with the main characters, he thinks.

"When Gabriel sticks the boys in TV Land," she says, still smiling and his mind jumps to Mystery Spot. People online are apparently obsessed with the guy as being _the classiest angel of the garrison _and he wonders if they're all conveniently ignoring the fact he psychologically tortured Sam by watching his brother die over a hundred times and not being able to stop it. "What's yours?"

Though he's got another five minutes of break left, he answers, "Hey, I gotta go back to work like right now, but it was nice meeting you."

"Oh, yeah, you too!"

He doesn't read at work again, after that.

.

_Changing Channels _isn't funny, especially since he gets a peek about how Cas is feeling when he realizes that Gabriel is his brother. _The Real Ghostbusters _isn't funny either, mostly because Becky's intensity, despite knowing that Sam's a real person, is still obsessed. _Abandon All Hope_, though, makes him sob his eyes out for the first time, burying his face in his pillow.

For the next three hours, he just watches a slideshow of pictures and videos of his mom and keeps crying until he has no more tears left.

.

In _My Bloody Valentine_, Dean and Sam finally get back together and it isn't as awkward as it has been the past few times. In some sick, horrible way, he actually feels jealous because he's never known what something like that feels like. He never had a sibling and he said "I love you" to Channing once. It wasn't her fault or his fault or anything; they just hadn't been together very long before he was sucked into his life and Crowley killed her. Taking away the brother aspect from these two, they're still an anomaly. He sees it now too, even if they still aren't really open with it despite knowing that he, Cas, and even Charlie on the rare times she comes over are all okay with what's going.

It's the little things that he's never felt before, in any form - Dean running his hand through Sam's hair without thinking about it, teasing each other for liking certain foods or books or weapons, Dean letting Sam completely lean on him to sync their breathing because recovery is still a two steps forward, one step back kind of thing and his lungs are still filling with liquid. Also, just what they're willing to put up with for each other. Examples hop all over the place, but the best he can think of happened a few days ago because he sent Sam into a panic attack when he tapped his elbow and Dean was forced to explain to him that his brother isn't so good with people touching him sometimes. Kevin can't even imagine what that must be like to have to work around, no matter what angle of their codependent relationship you look at it as. He also told Cas to shut up when he tried to blame himself for "breaking Sam's Wall," whatever that means.

Then Dean calls him family one day, which is kind of a big deal he's managed to gather. A few hours earlier he read about Dean and Sam talking about maybe having to kill Bobby's reborn wife in case she turned into a face-eating zombie and he couldn't it himself. Everything about them and now Kevin himself is fucked to Hell but he finally figures out that this is kind of what having older brothers would be like, in their own way.

And he likes it.

.

After reading about Heaven and how Zachariah could, in fact, get even worse (still not as bad as Metatron, but that doesn't actually mean much), he suddenly realizes something about _Abandon All Hope_ and flips back to it. In the hospital and then later back at the cabin safe house thing, there had been this demon he'd never really been introduced to. Even so, the other three said her name _a lot._ As he re-reads the part where Cas is in the ring of holy fire and Meg is mocking him, he realizes she's the same demon. She's also the same one who tried to kill their father and possessed Sam and they _worked _with her? After the disaster with Ruby?

He wonders how hardcore that redemption must've been for Sam and Dean to trust her with Cas.

Yeah, he's not even going to try to puzzle his mind around that one, he decides as he starts on _99 Problems _and tries not to get the song stuck in his head at the same time. By the middle of it, he also decides that maybe not _all _angels mean to be, well, insulting because though calling Sam an "abomination" isn't nice, it's pretty obvious Cas wasn't trying to hurt him, drunk or not. Then again, he's really the only one in the books who isn't trying to active kill Sam or manipulate Dean into saying yes to -

Well. That didn't take long.

With a sigh, he closes his laptop and gets up to put on his work shirt and a pair of jeans instead of sweatpants, trying to ignore the oncoming headache. When he'd started reading the books, he hadn't thought it could be much worse than actually living with the three, but man was he wrong. He'd never really been a "see the good inside of everyone" kind of guy but he's pretty sure his optimism level has plummeted substantially over the past two years when God hit him with a bolt of lightning, which isn't even a sentence that should realistically exist.

Dean's reading something in Latin as he passes, which is a weird image because that's normally Sam's job (which is actually kind of worrying). He asks if he wants a ride to work. It's only about a ten minutes' walk away, but Kevin says yes anyway.

.

It's like a movie, Kevin practically choking on the Coke he's drinking when he reads, "'_You, Cas, Bobby - I'm the least out of all you_.'" After Crowley (fucking Crowley) interrupts, he grabs his cell phone off the end table and calls up Charlie.

"_I'm on break so talk fast_," she says instead of hello.

Kevin doesn't know how to explain he really only called because he needed someone to pull him back into the present after reading that. "I'm on the second to last book," he answers. "Does Sam die and come back to life like Dean?"

"_Well, I'm pretty sure you've noticed they just sort of stop after the Apocalypse. I don't exactly know the details after that. If you're willing to brave the consequences, you can always ask them what happens._"

Dean decides to go after Death alone while Bobby, Cas, and Sam head off to commit an act of domestic terrorism. "I think I'll try," he says, adjusting his position on the bed so he's lying on his stomach, soda forgotten. "You know, later. Want the details?"

"_I wish thee luck, my courageous knight. And this is a total break in privacy but I'm not the ones with books written about me, so sure._"

They say goodbye because Charlie's break is coming to an end. He takes a deep breath and dives back into reading.

.

Sam's mostly alive and probably sleeping because it's two in morning, which means Kevin will denying crying again until the day he dies.

.

The next morning Dean's out getting a couple of newspapers from the completely unguarded rack outside of the local pharmacy and Sam looks better than he has in a month and a half. He's also an overly perceptive bastard which means he knows Kevin finished the books, even though that should probably takes reading minds.

"I'm guessing you want to know what happens," he says, not sounding particularly enthusiastic. Kevin agrees, feeling unbelievably uncomfortable with the whole thing. "Well, on my end anyway, Cas brought me back but not all the way so about a year and a half later Dean made a deal with Death to get my soul back and he put up a Wall to keep the crazy in. Crowley also started torturing monsters to find away into Purgatory, which made the Mother of All come back and then we killed her and the door to Purgatory opened and my Wall got broken so I went nuts. That also released the Leviathan and killed Cas, though he's back now obviously. You know everything else."

Kevin's not an idiot, so there's probably a lot more than that, but he decides not to press for details. He's already gone too much into this by now and it isn't fair to any of them. "My dad died when I was seven," he says suddenly because he at least owes them something and there's not much about him they don't know. "He was a college professor - taught Eastern Civ and some other subject I don't remember to upperclassmen and was driving home from a meeting. We lived in New Jersey at the time. He taught at Princeton. There was a thunderstorm and a car on the other side of the street hydroplaned. I don't know the details since I was just a kid and not there, but both my dad and the other driver died."

"Oh God, I'm sorry," Sam says. "That's awful."

He looks down at his bare feet, suddenly wishing they had carpet or something because it's cold. "It's fine. Been years," he tells him. "It's just, I and pretty much a whole fanbase know way more about you than is probably right and that's about the only big thing I think you guys don't know about me."

"Seriously? No, I don't know, embarrassing childhood memories you're willing to give up?"

For a moment he's about to say no before his eyes widen and he remembers more humiliating childhood stories than should be legal. Sam's smirking at him over his coffee, expectant. Kevin figures he owes the guy and talks for about a good half hours. When he gets him to laugh, he thinks embarrassing himself was worth it.

.

Since he promised, he tells Charlie even if there isn't much. It's the Fourth of July and she found out about fireworks in New Orleans she's always wanted to go to. It's about fifteen hours away but Kevin's the only one not used to long car trips. Still, he's more enthusiastic than Cas, and Charlie says fuck that and decides the fly, going as far as to book them a legitimate hotel. Sam, Dean, and Cas look like they feel so out of place it's actually kind of funny and find a hoodoo job for when the night's over because they feel weird not doing nothing, which also means Kevin gets to go on a hunt. They sit on the roof of the hotel along with twenty or so other people and for the first since this whole mess started Kevin feels kind of...normal.

Right as the show starts, he hears Sam say to Dean, "Remember when I was twelve and we spent the Fourth at Bobby's?"

"'Course. Jesus, Sammy, that means it's been eighteen years since we last actually sat down and watched fireworks."

During a lull between the firework "acts," Cas starts rattling on about the history and no one complains because it's actually pretty interesting. And, okay, he's going to rectify his last thought because having a Fallen Angel, super genius computer geek, Prophet of the Word, and two guys who've saved the world three times isn't exactly what any sane person would call normal. Still, he thinks, maybe he prefers this.

Weird is hard, but normality is overrated.

.

This actually turned out way, way sappier than I meant it to.

And, for the record, if you guys ever want to suggest, well, anything whether it has to do with this completely accidental series or not, you can do so.


End file.
